kitsch-ka-blogs

Over the summer, CornellWatch will not be updated, but watch for us August 25, when we’ll be liveblogging from the Democratic National Convention. coming back to Ithaca. YEAH!

Have a great break!

I wrote a guest column for the Daily Sun about my personal experiences and realizations  in the wake of the controversial April Fools Day post that used and abused Asian stereotypes. Check it out. (They couldn’t put it in the print edition because they were overloaded with senior goodbyes, but I will try to get it posted in the fall when they resume publication.)

If you haven’t already, go check out “My Night with Jenna B.” It’s written by this dude who totally banged Jenna B and apparently she totally pulled the downward-head-push on HIM and she totally was only a 5.75 outta 10 in the BJ department….

But we want to know: who is the author, the so-called “Cunnilingus Cowboy”? The Sun provides these little hints at the bottom of the story:

The ‘Cunnilingus Cowboy’ is a senior. The Sun granted him pseudonymity to protect his identity, but has verified, to the best of its ability, the facts of the article. The article is printed with Jenna B.’s permission.

Pseudonymity? Fuck that shit. We faithful readers want answers.

After the break: a poorly thought out theories of mine as to who this disrespec’in’ cowboy is.

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Here’s one scenario: 

Hobbling back from the library, a young college co-ed notices out of the corner of her eye a shiny new Lexus gleaming in the lamplight. She makes her way toward her apartment complex, arms full of books, and the car moves closer, revealing a dashing young blonde suitor with a fraternity-lettered sweathshirt on. As he passes, the studious young paramour catches his lusty eye, and he resolves to return once again to court his one true love.

The next week, he returns at the same time and asks her if she needs a ride; she demurely shakes her head no. He glides off into the night, hoping to chance upon her at a more socially opportune moment: perhaps when she is very drunk at a party.

A slight variation of the scenario follows after the break. This one replaces “shiny red Lexus” with “rusty old pick-up truck”; “fraternity lettered-sweatshirt” with “a black t-shirt with writing on it”; and ”dashing young blonde suitor” with “white male in his early 30s.”

Read the rest of this entry »

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a piece I wrote for the 4/16 edition of Bully Pulpit, a political publication on-campus that solicited an explanation of the controversial April Fools’ Day post and its aftermath. It contains an editor’s note (written by Everet Yi) at the bottom, which is reproduced below.

On April 1, I decided to post a Onion-style fake news piece titled “Asian Community Center to be Built Adjacent to Uris Library” on CornellWatch (blogs.kitschmag.com/watch), a blog about current events on campus. I figured it was April Fools’ Day, and that making light of stereotypes might somehow be more acceptable. The center was big news yesterday, and seemed like something that could stand up to some misguided lampooning. In any case, it was “satire,” right?

Wrong. Exactly a week later, some members of the Asian community, specifically those invested in the planning of the community center, found out about the post. Understandably, they didn’t think jokes about their status as the so-called “model minority” were very funny, and my initial response to them was basically: okay, I’m sorry that you’re offended and all, but you’re really reading way too much into this. After all, it was just a joke—a very crass, fell-flat-on-its-face type of joke—and as such, the viewpoints were not ones that I personally hold.

I hastily drew up a new post entitled “An Open Apology for a Bad Joke” and removed the offending April Fools’ post. I explained that I felt their pain and understood that the model minority stereotype is “the reason for the unrealistic academic pressure that Asian and Asian-American students face and likely the reason that they commit a disproportionate amount of Cornell’s suicides.”

Those shards of glass threatening to rip my journalistic credibility to threads were magically swept on the carpet—I was saved, right?

Wrong again. Riding the blogosphere train, commenters swarmed in on and tore apart my poorly constructed and ill-conceived apology. I was described as “a racist, pure and simple,” “some idiot college columnist [trying] to increase his… street cred,” and ultimately “a part of the problem.” Some intrepid internet vigilante even created a blog for me, reposting my initial entry and my “bullshit apology” below an image of two Ku Klux Klan members.

I have to admit that this was a scary situation for me, but that ultimately it is one that I am glad to have experienced. I met with concerned members of the Asian and Asian-American Center (A3C) and was educated as to the specifics of what angered and worried them about my post. I learned that in writing that post, I really was part of the problem—a problem that a 2004 task force reported as the “perceived lack of recognition and awareness of the reality, experience, and impact of racism and stereotyping as they relate to Asians and Asian Americans.”

I also have learned that I should not be one to speak or make assumptions about sensitive issues such as suicide or the model minority stereotype before I had done an appreciable amount of research; that the situation needs to be amended instead of defended; and that a more robust “meta-apology” of sorts should be issued. Hopefully before next Friday, I will be publishing this more comprehensive apology in the Daily Sun.

Once again—this time in light of more knowledge and less ignorance—I apologize for using racist stereotypes in a way that ridiculed the entire Asian and Asian-American community. I am hopeful that I am on the road to opening a dialogue on-campus about this issue, because, unfortunately, the belief and misuse of these stereotypes is altogether common—and fairly socially acceptable—on the Cornell campus. Please send suggestions and questions about the situation to watch@kitschmag.com.

Editor’s Note: We commend D. Evan Mulvilhill for starting an important dialogue across the Cornell campus. We condemn the commenters who have called Evan a cunt, racist, and a bigot.

We appreciate Evan’s use of humor to highlight the various stereotypes facing Asian and Asian American’s today. After all, if we don’t talk about it, nothing is going to get accomplished.

Without humor and dialogue, the world would be a sad place.

So, thank you Evan. Thanks for being brave by putting yourself out there by starting an important discussion regarding stereotypes concerning the APIA community.

P.S. Everyone calling for Evan’s head, CALM DOWN. Sheesh.

Kitsch Magazine (the print one, whoever they are) threw this weird-ass/cool-ass party at No Radio Records this past Friday. These three following pictures pretty much sum it up:

SCRABBLE 

Holla at yo’ Scrabble board.

MUSTACHES

Our sassy bite size editor, Sadie Smith, rockin’ the Hollywood ’stache.

MUSIC

Oh yeah… there were some bands too.

 MOAR PIX?

http://flickr.com/photos/19485833@N05/sets/72157604529735841/

http://picasaweb.google.com/efeedor1/MustacheParty

http://picasaweb.google.com/sadie.sarah/MustacheParty?pli=1

Doris Davis, associate provost for admissions and enrollment, gave the peering eyes of the Cornell Daily Sun a little glimpse into the vast, tinkering machine that is the Undergraduate Admissions Office.

Davis’s best stuff: “Essentially, Cornell tries to admit as many students as we can without over-enrolling,” she stated. “I think some of the peer schools try to admit as few students as possible.”

Our admit rate ended up being 20.4%. Compared to Harvard’s 7.1%, ours seems rather “unelitist,” but admissions rates don’t really tell us much. For more information on the byzantine workings of the admissions world, read this epic New Yorker article detailing the “social logic of Ivy League admissions.”

PROPS: To IvyGate blogger Maureen O’Connor, whose “Epistolary Drama in Three Acts” follows the cyberfoibles of a famous actress’s quasi-douchebag brother. I won’t give too much away, but know this: it involves a young upstart prompter looking to make it big at a Princeton theatre event, the aforementioned quasi-DB’s intense repulsion for Reply-All, and some hot and steamy OED-citation.

DROPS: To myself, for writing a satirical piece of tripe that pissed off the majority of internet-using Cornellians. Sorry, guys… Next time I decide to write something that’s unnecessarily inflammatory, incredibly insensitive, and cringe-inducingly crass, I’ll send it off to the (now-defunct) Cornell American. (P.S.: I think I’m addicted to adverbs. And parallelism.)

One week and a day ago, I decided to write an April Fools’ Day, fake news-style post titled “Asian Community Center to be Built Adjacent to Library.” Earlier today, I removed the post because of a large amount of negative feedback.

The day or two before I wrote the post, there was a forum hosted to dicuss the plans for an Asian Community Center, which the S.A. had approved in November. The article’s central joke was that the center would be built next to the library so students could study more easily; this played up the “model minority” stereotype that Asians tend to work harder academically as a whole. While I’m not saying that the stereotype is completely unfounded, I think that it is the reason for the unrealistic academic pressure that Asian and Asian-American students face and likely the reason that they commit a disproportionate amount of Cornell’s suicides.

The rest of the post included myriad stereotypes about Asians: bubble tea, mispronounciation of Rs and Ls, you name it… In being over-the-top with layering on the stereotypes, I thought I could pull off an Onion-style article but it seems, as one commenter noted, that I went in the direction of Carlos Mencia.

In looking at articles on the Onion about Asian-Americans, I found that their angle focused on Asians who decided consciously to defy the stereotypes of being hard-working academic overachievers. This is probably the more tasteful way of addressing the situation, and ultimately the funnier one.

Some commenters seemed to think that I was some mega-racist or the epitome of what the Asian-American community needs to be afraid of. Neither is true: in the end, this was all just a bad, crass joke. So here I am, tail between my legs and offering the offended parties my sincerest apologies.

Sincerely,

D. Evan Mulvihill

EDIT: Comments were closed because I felt they exhausted the spectrum of responses. If you have something new to add, please email watch@kitschmag.com. (A further statement on this situation will be made in the coming days.)

EDIT#2: Comments are again open–but I will not hesitate to delete comments that are mean, hateful, or less than three words. (I’ll leave the existing hate comments for posterity.) After meeting with representatives of the Asian and Asian American Community Center (A3C), I am in the process of writing a longer and more comprehensive meta-apology-cum-personal-narrative that should hopefully be published in the Daily Sun before next Friday. As part of this process, I will be reposting the original offending April Fools’ Day blog in its original form. The only update will be a link to this apology and the acknowledgment of the Sun column-to-come.

What do hockey players, N*Sync, and the Cornell Senior Prom have to do with each other? Beats me, but apparently Slope Media had something in mind when they made this video of the men’s hockey team dancing (poorly) to N*Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye,” which is supposed to promote “Duff Ball.” (The name made me really excited because I thought it might be Simpsons-themed, but then I realized it was just held in the Duffield Hall Atrium. Boo.)

PS: It just dawned on me that they’re saying goodbye to Cornell… I guess the one-night stand between the hockey team and Cornell didn’t go so well in the end.